Gas turbine engines are known and, when utilized in aircraft applications, typically include a fan delivering air into a bypass duct and into a core engine flow. The core engine flow passes into a compressor where the air is compressed and then delivered into a combustion section. The air is mixed with fuel in the combustion section and ignited. Products of that combustion pass downstream over turbine rotors, driving them to rotate.
Historically, a fan drive turbine drove the fan through a direct drive, such that they rotated at the same speed. This restricted the speed available for the fan drive turbine, as the fan speed was limited.
More recently, it has been proposed to include a gear reduction between the fan drive turbine and the fan. With this change, the speed of the fan drive turbine can increase.
In gas turbine engines, there are a number of bearing compartments which are desirably sealed. In the prior art, operating at slower speeds, contact seals have been utilized, which directly contacted surfaces rotating with the shaft to seal the bearing compartments. Such contact seals were typically cooled using oil or other lubricant, which was circulated through a cooling system. For geared engines, in which certain components are enabled to rotate faster than corresponding components in non-geared engines, to achieve the same amount of cooling a larger volume of lubricant would be needed. Moreover, a larger volume of lubricant would require a larger holding tank and correspondingly larger cooling system fluid pumping apparatus. All of the larger volume of lubricant, the larger holding tank, and the larger fluid pumping apparatus would add undesirable weight to the engine.